Friday, March 11, 2011

i REALLY like pickled onions.

So there I was wondering what to do with all those cocktail onions in the fridge. What to do besides put them in a Gibson or eat them. It seems my penchant for Gibsons is really just an excuse to eat onions. Should I drop the pretense and have a different drink? A different drink whilst eating onions? Perhaps. Just eat the onions and leave out the drink? Perhaps.

It occurred to me that there must be other drinks requiring an onion as garnish. Damned if I knew what they were. Damned if I didn't do any research whatsoever to find out what they were. Mostly it was an idle thought each time I ate a pickled onion. (Or each time I made a Gibson). On the proverbial back-burner those thoughts remained. They remained until Erik got down to "TEN!".

"(U)nless you REALLY like pickled onions, its not one of those things that you’re probably going to be making any time soon." blogged Erik.

"I like pickled onions," I thought to myself. "I REALLY like them..."

So from the back-burner to the front-burner came the Yellow Rattler. I did not however make note of the proportions. I did remember the comment that it's basically a Bronx with an onion in it. One night I made a Bronx, and put an onion in it. I used the recipe from American Bar. It was enjoyable. I'm a fan of orange and wine and onion. There's a pork loin recipe we make that uses garlic, onion, orange juice, hoisin sauce and white wine so the flavour wasn't anything I found unpleasant. Still it's definitely not a dessert cocktail or any such thing.

A few days later (more or less) I reviewed the proportions. Much to my delight it's an equal measure cocktail.

"Fantastic. I only need to dirty one jigger"

So I made one. I liked it too! My previous experience with orange juice in (short dry) cocktails has left me unimpressed. The Monkey Gland and Satan's Whiskers aren't likely to be made by me. A Coronado Luau Special or a Scorpion on the other hand....

The only complaint was that I didn't really notice the gin in the Yellow Rattler. I've been using Cara Cara oranges. I should review the recipe with Valencias or such. I also have attempted Old Tom Gin. I noticed the gin more in that version than in previous ones. Hmm. Not sure why that is. Maybe Beefeater isn't ideal in Bronx style cocktails? Maybe it is the oranges? Who can say?

Okay, now on to the real reason for this post. Reviewing the 10 recipes at Cocktaildb that feature onion as garnish I wondered about The Martinez. Why? I don't know. I just did. So I surfed on over to Kaiser Penguin to read the recipe comparisons. Reading through the comments I stopped at one from Rowen. The name seemed familiar....

So maybe, just maybe I'll play along at home with the Bronx varitaions. Well, some of them anyway (not the Silver or Golden. Likely the ones with bitters). You should try it too! If you like that sort of thing...